Can curiosity be dangerous?

I question the compass of my life

My aim for years has been driven by curiosity - a desire to learn and grow and expand. It also makes sense that one of my biggest fears is forgetting things I have learned, just watching as it all slips through my hands. Sometimes life feels relentless and my mind grows cynical. I want to believe that the things I’m doing really can build up and expand, and it’s encouraging in moments when I make connections across many aspects of my life. However, it’s also discouraging to see just how much I forget. Even when I try to capture meaning with words, it’s often lost because the words no longer provoke the same feeling in me as when I wrote them. It feels like an echo of the past, a period I’m no longer experiencing.

Same stale themes, different wording. When I discover a new insight or allow myself to fall deep into an interest, my mind lights up. It’s a flow. And for a period, I feel such a sense of meaning from that perspective. When that happens, I see it everywhere, and suddenly I have the energy and wisdom to act more meaningfully. And then it fades away. And I am left reading echoes of a past time. Is that feeling gone forever? Is it just a part of me now? Or is it forgotten.

I’m desperately searching for that energy all the time, to give me the strength and courage to act and change. But sometimes, that feeling is only triggered when I encounter certain ideas at critical times - when my life experiences intersect something I’ve read. And when it happens, it’s effortless.

For instance, one such phase in my life was triggered by the book “The Courage to Teach,” where I first grasped the idea of paradox - two things coexisting at the same time. It felt like the perfect solution, diverging from religion or even science that held their truth to be fully true. They seemed to exert their structure across all realms even though the nature of truth seemed to elude everything. I concluded if there was no absolute truth there might be changing, relative truths. I started to see paradoxes everywhere. Then I read “Tuesdays with Morrie,” in which Morrie spoke of a “tension of opposites” that animates life (similar to Aristotle’s golden mean). I also listened to Philosophize This, where an episode discussed a vision of the world that was adaptive and where truth itself was ever-changing. The goal should not be absolute truth, but rather a colorful worldview like a painting that draws from many truths. I restructured my own worldview with this in mind, and it profoundly impacted my writing. It was a new way of seeing things. And then months passed.

And now, I’m back to where I was. Reading books for new ideas to consume. Still not fully satisfied with the answer paradox proposes, though it is still an important part of how I view the world. Before paradox, it was the concept of the process that I held firmly in my mind. Those concepts are still there, likely a part of me. Just sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten them, or their meaning has been eroded over time, and that I find it harder to act according to them.

I want to focus on the process, but frankly, I’m a bit tired of going at everything headstrong. I idealized the process because of what it could eventually give me - self improvement, joy, prosperity. I am thankful for those periods in my life where everywhere I looked I saw something to improve, but I’m wondering if it’s really a sustainable way to live. So here I am, balancing between self-satisfaction and self-improvement - a perfect example of the tension of opposites. I want to believe I can be satisfied while making progress.

But when I question - progress towards what? - I’m not so sure anymore. When I was in school I embraced schoolwork because it was something I was forced to do. Why hate school if a perspective shift can make it both enjoyable and easier? Curiosity was beneficial both extrinsically and intrinsically. With high school ending soon, however, I’m not sure where I will find my place in this world. Will I just adapt to however it is beneficial in this new arena? Will I say I’m pursuing wisdom when I’m really pursuing the aims of this achievement society - money, prestige, and progress?

The whole purpose of my curiosity, and philosophy, is to break free of how I view the world, to escape my basic assumptions, and hopefully, get a clearer grasp of reality. It’s to look otherness in the face in spite of fear. But is my worldview based around adaptivity really just a way of conformity? How much otherness have I really grasped? Is it just a self absorbed way to navigate the world, maximizing my production value?

When I look at what I’ve done for other people, and this world, it seems pitifully small. Maybe that’s because I am small in the grand scheme of things though. I spend all this time “investing in myself” in the hopes that I will nurture the skills to better help people in the future. But in my haste, do I forget the otherness and realness of the people directly surrounding me? Do I forget what I can do for them, and what I could learn from them? I never seek to hurt others, and I think before speaking. But I also hold back kindness out of fear. I bottle up my feelings. I forget their innate value. I miss opportunities to connect and spread joy.

I remember a period when spreading good to others was firmly in my focus, but once again, it has fallen out. I’ve re-adapted, or rather, re-conformed to this panopticon that tells me to focus on myself. The normalization of individualism is a great way to maximize production after all.

I don’t know what to do. I want to do and learn everything, though I know I can’t. I want to sprint through life though I know it’s a marathon. I want to consume all the wisdom before I have experienced enough to actually understand it.

It seems there is a false curiosity of conformity. But there is also a periodic true curiosity that wells up inside, when reading and writing and acting are almost effortless, where my mind lights up and connects like constellations.

I think it’s OK if I leave some books, some media, some life lessons that I currently find indigestible, to the future, when I will understand better. If I dive into them too soon, in the wrong environment and life context, I lose any value. After a certain starting point, true curiosity should be accompanied by a feeling of woww, not emptiness. And let’s face it - if that feeling doesn’t come, I’m not being truly curious - I’m just conforming to extrinsic motivators.

Navigate curiosity by feeling, not self-interest.

Photo by Valentin Antonucci on Unsplash